Creative World

This week in Steal Like an Artist:

I learned the importance of building your own world of creativity and creative people.
At the start of the chapter, Kleon tells us about how he grew up in the Midwest, surrounded by corn.  He was always wanting to get away and go to a place where something was happening.  I felt like I was reading something I wrote myself!  I grew up on a farm surrounded by fields of corn, always wanting to leave for a while to go somewhere that had something going on.

Then, Kleon tells us that we don't have to live anywhere other than the place we already live to connect with the world that we want to be in.  In the meantime, before we find out where that place is, we can build our own world.

Kleon makes a point to say that "our brains get too comfortable in our every day surroundings".  I couldn't agree with that more.  Sometimes, I feel like I'm stuck in a creative rut unless I make an effort to get out and go somewhere.  Whether it's another state or just a new place in Champaign I haven't been to yet,  it can help me find new experiences and ways of thinking if I'm around new people who do these things differently than I do.  It really helps to give you an opened mind and a broadened horizon.  Going to places I'm not familiar with and exploring has perhaps been one of the best decisions for creativity I've made.  I think if I get used to the same routine after a while,  it's a little more difficult to come up with ideas or find inspiration.

Some graffiti I found while walking through Athens helped me find a new style of drawing!

 I agree that it definatly helps to live around interesting people if you're a creative person or someone who's looking for ideas and inspiration.  After reading this, I thought about what I'm doing to try and meet more people like this...the answer was not much.  I realized that I haven't really been making an effort to try and meet creative people.  I have been focusing mainly on classes and have been too busy to make time for going places lately.  It's been a bit of a struggle as I find when I go most places around town, people seem a little more reserved and don't want to talk if they're alone or they're closed off in groups.  I'm hoping once it gets warmer out, it might be easier to find new people.  I'm going to have to start thinking of places to go where I can meet people!

This was one of the books I found back in H4:  "Stardust" Story by Neil Gaiman and illustrations by Charles Vess.  Having already read the original book, I was excited to find an illustrated version of it.  

                     

I really enjoyed looking through all the chapters to see how the images and text were arranged together.  Some pages were full illustrations, others had more text, or a mix of the two.  Before reading it, I expected it to be more like a graphic novel because it has some adult content in it.  I found that it's layout is more like a children's storybook, which makes it a little more fun!  

                  

A few of the illustrations act as a frame around the text, creating a shape for the text to be arranged in.  It was really interesting to look through and see how each page would be arranged.  I enjoyed going back and rereading this story.  It was fun to see what the illustrator did with the characters and the scenery designs.  I really liked seeing how the appearances of the characters change through the story to show the passing of time.  Though I really liked the images, there was not much consistency in the style of them.  Some were done like paintings, others like charcoal drawings.  Other than that, I like this book very much!